How To Use A Digital Guitar Tuner

If you want to know how to use a digital guitar tuner, have no fear: It's a simple feat that makes tuning a guitar much quicker and easier. Now, knowing how to tune a guitar by ear is a useful skill, but at some point, you just want it done quick and dirty. Knowing how to use a digital guitar tuner will get the job done, and you'll be back rocking the crowd in no time. Some digital guitar tuners even sense vibrations instead of sound, so you can even use them to tune in particularly loud environments. All you need is a guitar and a tuner, and you're ready to go.

Attach Your Tuner: There are different types of guitar tuners out there, but most of them clip onto your guitar in some fashion. If you play electric, there are also ones that you can plug into a cable. All you do is plug one end of the cable into your guitar and the other into an input jack on the tuner. If you're playing an acoustic, the most common places to attach your digital guitar tuner are the soundhole and the head.

Pluck Your Strings: Begin by plucking your strings. The tuner will indicate whether the pitch is sharp, flat, or perfectly in tune. This is usually done on an LED screen or with lights. Read the instructions for your digital guitar tuner to find the exact method, or just use your common sense. If a red light is showing on your screen, and it turns green as you're tuning it, that's probably a good indication that you've tuned your guitar well.

Tune Your Guitar: Repeat the process for every string. Get the desired tuning, and be sure to go back and check your strings one more time after you tune them. If your guitar is very out of tune, it's a good idea to give them a rough tune, and then go back and fine tune everything afterward. When you stretch strings, the other ones also change slightly, so the fine tune can bring any slightly altered strings back to their tuning.

That's all it takes. Remember, standard tuning for a guitar is EADGBE. If you know how to use a digital guitar tuner, even someone with the worst ear in the world can have a perfectly-tuned guitar at their disposal.